Disruptive Conversations

Just testing to see why the FeedFlare is not appearing yet on posts.  FeedFlare seems to be working even the Advanced Templates, so it looks like I do NOT need to edit the individual template files, which is good to know.

(Originally posted to http://dyork.livejournal.com/264769.html )

Today, in a post entitled "Embracing the Inevitable", Linden Labs officially announced that the source code for the Second Life client has now been made open source! More than just "open source", the source code has actually been licensed under the GPL, which is by far one of the most stringent of the various open source licenses. What this primarily means is that any modifications made by other developers - and subsequently distributed to others - must be made available under the GPL back to the rest of the community. The end result should ideally be greater innovation in general. (I'll also note that Linden Labs will offer commercial licensing of their software to those interested.)[1]

So what does this mean for regular Second Life users?  Today?  Probably not much initially. But longer term it has a huge potential impact. One of the barriers, in my opinion, to SecondLife or any of the other existing virtual worlds becoming the primary virtual world in use has been the fact that all of the client interfaces have been proprietary clients using proprietary protocols. No real way for people to understand what is going on or to build their own specialized clients.

In contrast, think of the World Wide Web. It's wide open using open protocols like HTTP and HTML that are easy for anyone to use. Anyone can write a web browser using whatever language they want. Anyone can create a web server... again in any language. (I've written one in the past.) And if you don't like one of the existing web browsers whose code is open source, you can take that source code and modify it. How many derivatives of Netscape's original code have been created? How many Firefox derivates are out there? Think of the rich number of browser clients that are out there. IE, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Flock... and seven zillion other ones. All competing in various ways with new features and capabilities. The 2-D web interface allows full innovation... and look what has happened!

In contrast, for Second Life there is currently exactly one client.  The one from Linden Labs.

If Second Life is indeed to become the primary 3-D collaborative interface (and that is right now to be a big "if"), one of the basic requirements is to allow this type of openness and integration for interaction. People need to be able to develop other clients... perhaps specialized... perhaps competing with the LindenLabs client. Many people will hopefully take a look through the LL client code and send potential fixes back to LL for inclusion in the client. In the end, that means we'll have a stronger and more robust client. Others may take a look at the code, decide that they can write a much better client and do so! (With the guidance from the LL code on how to interact with the SL server environment.)

Other developers may use this as an opportunity to "scratch an itch" and fix something that has always bothered them or add something that they always wanted to add. Those itch-scratches will make their way back to Linden Labs who may (or may not) choose to incorporate them into the main SL client. The end result could be a much more stable SL client with more features. Or not... it largely depends on if developers are able to figure out what LL does in the code and decide to make changes.

Now the client is only half the issue. For SL to truly grow into the overall 3-D interface, you'd need the server as well. From what I could see that is not - yet - open source, but this statement certainly could give one hope (emphasis added):

A lot of the Second Life development work currently in progress is focused on building the Second Life Grid — a vision of a globally interconnected grid with clients and servers published and managed by different groups.

Think again of the Web. It's an amalgam of servers run by a zillion different people (using a wide range of clients. That's where the 3-D Internet needs to get to... whether that is SL or not that brings it to that point is a different question. This statement, though, does show that Linden Labs certainly understands that it needs to get there. They end with a nice quote:

Releasing the source now is our next invitation to the world to help build this global space for communication, business, and entertainment. We are eager to work with the community and businesses to further our vision of our space.

Kudos to Linden Labs for taking this step... in the short term there may be some hiccups (as attackers look through the code to see if there are any holes to exploit immediately), but in the long term I think it bodes well for the future of Second Life as that collaborative interface. It will be fascinating to see what happens next...

[1] I'll park my GPL pedant hat for a moment, because the statement at the bottom of their licensing page does make we wonder a bit. Specifically, "Note that some components necessary for use with the Second Life viewerare licensed from third parties under different licenses." Are those "components" included as part of the actual distribution? Do they fit into the "mere aggregation" clause of the GPLv2? Or are they libraries linked in? And how are they linked? I don't understand exactly how the SL code is put together, but statements like that just do raise a red flag to me... hopefully Linden Labs did go over all of this with GPL-literate attorneys.

(Originally posted to http://dyork.livejournal.com/263277.html )

Robert Scoble spent the week between Christmas and New Years touring around with presidential candidate John Edwards and it has made for interesting reading.  His "Things I learned" post and his response to criticism about his questioning both made for interesting reads.  All quite fascinating as we continue to see the evolution of the role of social media.

Thanks for taking us along on the trip, Robert.

UPDATE: I recently came across this post that I wrote on this topic back in August 2005 that also provided a couple of examples (one of which I note is no longer available, but hey, 1.5 years is ages in terms of the web).

(Originally posted to http://dyork.livejournal.com/261661.html )

Continuing a theme I've harped on numerous times over the past year or two in FIR reports and posts here, I sent a message to the New England Podcasting mailing list today talking again about the incredible importance of making it easy for other people to promote your brand in social media in a graphical form.  You can read the message but the point can be summarized in this:

If you want people in the social media world to help promote your brand, make it easy for them to get a logo or other image associated with your brand.

Ideally make it a nice little graphic people can right-click and grab (either as an image or link) directly from your home page, as both Mitel (my employer) and also Skype have done.  Or make a seperate page as Shel and Neville did over at FIR with a link to that page from the sidebar of the home page.  Whatever you do, just make it easy and people will help you promote your brand.

Now, of course, total control freaks will argue - correctly - that people can also abuse your brand if you make the logo available.  Definitely!  For instance, I've seen the Skype logo morphed into so many different forms... behind jail bars... with a big red circle/bar (to indicate "No Skype here")... Jan over in Malaysia is always inserting into various images, not always of the charitable type.  But there's two arguments there: 1) in the end, the abusers are using your brand image (and they probably would anyway) and inadvertantly helping promote your brand logo; and 2) unless you are doing really hideous things as a company, there are probably far more who will use your image positively.

I'd also add that if you are such a control freak, you certainly aren't going to do well in "social media" and you may as well just prepare right now to be outdone by more social-media-savvy competitors.  Run away now while you still can (and perhaps consider a different career move... any illusions of control in PR/marketing are swiftly being destroyed in the world of user-generated content... at best you can hope to control some aspects like the images used (maybe) and some of the message - but that involves engaging in the conversation).

Anyway, have you looked at your company/entity/podcast website lately?  Is there a graphic readily available that people can use?

(Originally posted to http://dyork.livejournal.com/262570.html)

Tis the season to launch new shows... C.C. just passed word that he's launched a new video podcast at http://www.oneguysthoughts.com/, primarily as a way to beta-test CastBlaster Video... interesting to see...

(Originally posted to http://dyork.livejournal.com/255035.html )

Working alone in a home office... in a world that has increasingly moved away from regular voice communication into one of email, IM, etc.... I personally enjoy having some music playing in the background (which is especially great because my IP phone that doubles as my PC speakers automatically cuts the music off when a call comes in).  I naturally have a good number of CDs, purchased music, etc., and there are great podcasts like CC's Accident Hash that do a wonderful job of providing decent background music.  But still, there are times when you just want the random selections that come from a radio-esque type of environment.  Being a German speaker and rock fan, I've often turned to radio Ohrenkneifer and that's been a great source.  But I think it was a posting of gcrumb that pointed me over to Last.fm which bills itself as "the social music revolution".  (FAQ here) Fascinating site... I haven't yet installed their specific software (so I'm not sending my listening data into the site), but I did try out some of the lists.  Naturally I found the "Germans - Deutsch" group with apparently 3,018 members and it, too, has provided some good background music.  Unlike Ohrenkneifer, it's not all in German... it's really whatever seems to be recommended by members of the group.  So it might be all auf Deutsch... or then the other day it was playing Aretha Franklin, Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins!  A bit random... but that's okay. Again, nice for a background.

My only complaint is that the flash-based player that you get if you click "Play Group Radio" only plays when that specific browser window has focus (at least in FF 2.0).  So if you flip to another window, the music stops.  Not a huge deal for me in the way I work because I have it running on one computer while I work on another... but still an issue.  I'm sure this would be solved if I downloaded the Last.fm software... but I need to explore it more before I feel comfortable with an app that is sending back my listening preferences to a central repository.  (What do you expect from a security/privacy nut?)

Interesting stuff going on out there...